Monday, March 14 2005 13:33 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Ranchi: The battle lines for tomorrow's (Mar 15, 2005) election to the Jharkhand Speaker's post have been drawn with nominees from both the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and the Opposition United Progressive Alliance (UPA) today (Mar 14, 2005) filing their papers for the chair and expressing confidence of a win.

While the NDA has nominated Inder Singh Namdhari, former Speaker, to the post, the UPA has nominated Annapoorna Devi, who has won on a Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) ticket.

Talking to newsmen after filing his nomination, Namdhari appealed to the MLAs to keep the Speaker's post out of controversy and expressed hope that the Opposition candidate would withdraw paving his way to becoming the consensus candidate for the Speaker's post.

While admitting that there could be some "acrimonious minds" in the UPA following the political developments since last fortnight, Namdhari said, however, "I am still hopeful that better sense would prevail".

He said that the UPA had time till tomorrow to withdraw Annapoorna Devi's nomination.

Rejecting Namdhari's appeal, convener of UPA coordination committee Stephen Marandi said that the alliance would "fight it out" during the Speaker's election tomorrow.

RJD leader and Parliamentary Affairs Minister in Shibu Soren's Government, Girinath Singh, also said that there was no "going back" on Annapoorna Devi's nomination.